build a coalition of support mainly within the global south, and use that as a foundation basically overwhelm the u.s. by numbers. and so i think the slowing economy actually makes the global south more important to china economically of course, but also diplomatically in pursuing its geopolitical inns. >> let me jump in here now. i think further on the dri, i tend to agree it is not just -- it is a vision. i wouldn't even call it an idea. it is a vision, a very ambitious vision. but ambition and vision are just that. that does not mean they are not■ reality. i came to see the global south, the dri as a collection of projects, very disparate collection ofro up in

an presented as a strategy. i actually see -- secondly, i agree with michael, and i think that you set it to, , the numbes game is important. but important only in rather narrowfi domains. -- >> we believe this to keep our over 40 year commitment to congressional coverage. you can finish watching it on the c-span now out. we live now to the floor of the u.s. senate where members are getting ready to vote on nominations. live coverage of the senate here on c-span2. the presiding officer: the senator from washington. mrs. murray: i ask unanimous consent that there be up to two minutes of debate between senators braun, lee,and johnson prior to a scheduled vote. the presiding officer: without objection.

mr. lee: madam president. the presiding officer: the senator from utah. mr. lee: madam president i've come to the floor today to talk about some of the spending requests known as earmarks that are placed in this legislation, earmarks have long

members of the congress as, quote-unquote, sweeteners, that make the package go down easier than it would otherwise. handouts are given to business entities, nonprofit entities or otherwise that individual members request, sometimes successfully. one of them involves after significant sum of $850,000, just should i of a million dollars -- just shy of a million dollars to a left-wing organization known for publicly calling for the granting of citizenship to illegal immigrants, persons who have entered our country, whose common characteristic that they hold in common that unites them is the fact that they entered the country unlawfully, in violation of our laws. this arises during a significant period of time, one in which we're experiencing the worst immigration crisis that we've ever known, and congress wants

to send $508,000 to an -- $850,000 to an organization that's interested in enabling and inflaming it. why exactly, even if you agree with the objectives of this organization the community empowerment organization, or nice, even if you agree with that entity, which mean americans don't, why exac that we're going to take moneyway from u.s. taxpayers -- money away from u.s. taxpayers and use that to fund this organization that actively assists in helping illegal aliens get american jobs? at nice we envision a world whe all people regardless of immigration status live and work with dignity and justice. dignity and justice are nice things. they are things that the american people aspire atto, th cause people to want to come to the united states america.

we need to be a nation that also honors our own laws, and enforces them. support this bile schumer minibus bill, with this earmark, then you are votin to organization to the tune of $850,000, which in turn goes to help perpetuate, inflame, and extend the immigration crisis, the border security crisis. and so to that end, madam president, i ask unanimous consent to reprint theoint explanatory statement to accompany h.r. 4366, the consolidated appropriations act changes, and that is ash understand that that this amended version be considered the vaunts explanatory statement to accompany h.r. 4366, the removal of the house cdf project that would give $508,000 to the new immigrant communitywz empowerment organization in

t-hud. the presiding officer: there 0 objection? mrs. murray: madam president, reserving the right to object, last congress senate and house appropriations committee leaders reinstated the practice of congressionally directed spending or cds, with bipartisan support. cds is one very important way for lawmakers to advocate for the communities they represent and they know best. at the beginni of this congress, the senior senator from maine and i laid out a very robust process alongside our counterparts in the house to accept cds requests for fiscal year 20246789 the process includes -- 2024. the process includes important guardrails and requirements to, among other things, ensure transparency, ensure members do not have financial stakes in the projects that they seek to fund, ensure projects are eligible to be funded, and that for-profit entities do not receive funding, and more. if a project meets those requirements, it is eligible for funding.

this is a member-driven process, and we respect the eligible projects members choose to request or to withdraw support for. all four corners worked to ensure that it reflects the interests of every member, that includes funding for eligible projects they sponsored. but what the senator from utah is offering would undo all that hard work and overrule members about the projects they have secured funding for in this package. that is not how this process can or should work. we have a process here that is driven by the place and by members' requests, and that process cannot be up ended now at the 11th hour by a single so would overrule other lawmakers and deny funding for projects they have secured for their constituents. that cannot happen now. i will not let it happen.

i object. the presiding officer: objection is heard. mr. lee: madam president. the presiding officer: the senator from u plea. mr. lee: first of all, with regard to the last request request, it is important to remember a couple of things. the whole bill together with the congressionally directed spending elements for the first time just in the last 48 hours or so, and so it is not as though this has been through a public process with debate back and forth. the essential element of any body is that there is an opportunity to amend, debate, and discuss. that's been taken advantage of in the last 24 hours, a measure to remove something that has been characterized online as providing a million dollars to fund bdm sex parties. if that can be removed, i don't know why this one can't. in any event, to say in this cake is bake $, that this passed when it is not passed is folly and doesn't bode well for

this institution, which has long heralded itself and held itself out to the world as the world's greatest deliberative legislative body. let's go to another one. georgetown university. we've got nearly a million dollars, $963 million to georgetown university for a prison justice initiative. i don't know a whole lot about exactly what this will accomplish. it may have good elements to it. the point -- george towning wealthiest is one. wealthiest universities on earth. it has an endowment just -- just its endowment alone is valued at over ozzed 3.2 billion. why does it need to be subsidized by u.s. taxpayers? to that end, madam president, i ask unanimous consent to reprint

the joint explanatory statement to accompany h.r. 4366, the consolidated appropriations act 2024 that was printed in record yesterday's record with the followings changes. that this amended version be considered the joint explanatory stement to accompany h h.r. 4366, the removal of a house project that would provide $963,000 to georgetown universitywn for the georgetown university prison justice initiative in cjs. the presiding officer: is there objection? mrs. murray: madam president, i object. the presiding officer: objection is heard. mr. lee: madam president. the presiding officer: the senator from utah. mr. lee: we've g a small handful of people who have negotiated this behind closed doors. they've taken things out that they themselves found controversial. so apparently it is a her metically sealed chamber that hads purported to be by my friend and distinguished colleague, the yet we're told that the cake is

sufficiently baked, not for their purposes but for ours. when we want to make a change to it, when we want to have a debate about it, we're shut down, told sorry. no dice, that cannot happen. that's unacceptable.■y mr. lee: madam president. the presiding officer: the senator from utah. mr. lee: there's also a measure in this legislation, a measure calling for $2.5 million to be set aside for outdoor recreation purples. -- purposes, funding could i yachting -- kayaking activities in new hampshire. who doesn't like those kinds of activities? but i think most of us could agree, this is completely inappropriate and it's an

unnecessary use of federal taxpayer dollars. this ought to be funded solely at the state and local level or with private funding. to that end, i ask unanimous consent to reprint the joint explanatory statement to accompany h.r. 4366, the consolidated appropriations act 2024, that was printed in yesterday's record with the following changes, and that this amended version be considered the joint aconsider h.r. 4366, removal of the senate -- of a senate community development fund that would provide $2.5 million to the city of franklin, new hampshire, for outdoor recreation in t-hud. the presidinoffir: is there objection? mrs. murray: i object. the presiding officer: objection is is heard. mr. lee: i yield the floor.

a senator: madam president. the presiding officer: the senator from indiana. mr. braun: here today, since i've been in the senate, a little over five years, i think i've been the most steadfast voice in terms of whatever we want to do here, we shouldn't be borrowing it from our kids and our grandkids. any of you up there listening, there's a sad state of affairs in the sense that just a little over five years ago we were $18 trillion in debt, borrowing at the tune of about $1 trillion a

year to backfill for all the things we want to do here and ask you and your kids to pay for it. to me, that's a bad business plan. sadly, it gets even worse. over these five years, instead of $1 trillion annually, it's now $1 trillion every six months. for those of you that are good at math, take current interest rates, apply that to $34 trillion, soon to be 35, if it's not already crossed that threshold. that is a big figure with a lot of zeros behind it. to put it in perspective, the interest on that alone is going to be about what we spend on defense in the next year or the discretionary side of our budget. how we've ever gotten there, i

don't know. but we're another package tomorrow, friday, and it takes the whole process7 of doing budgets, asking do you really need it. aren't there some places that we can surely get back to where we don't■k spend more than we take in? because when we don't, we're borrowing every penny of it. and on every dollar that we spend here, five years ago it was about 20 cents of that dollar we had to borrow. now it's cents. and the arithmetic, the numbers don't just go away. it will be the single-biggest thing all of you, this country has to deal with over the next five to ten years, and it's just starting to get to the point where it's going to literally break the back of the american public. sooner or later you won't have people lending us that money.

sooner or later it's going to crowdut almost everything we do here. and it's shameful in my mind. i want to focus on one, actually small part of it, but what is symbolic of what shouldn't be happening here. earmarks. earmarks are justified because we ought to be able to maybe do it better here, should have int it, not let the executive branch do that. but to me that would be valid if in fact we were balancing our budget in the first place. until we get total fiscal reform here and at least start to turn it around get smaller, the debt is never going to get smaller because in general, if you take out loan, imagine if you told your banker, i just want to pay interest only

for as long as i have that loan. they'd laugh you out of the office. so when it comes to earmarks, this bill is filled with them. it wasn't too many years ago we got rid of them. then the house started doing them again, both sides of the aisle. we are elective here if you want to do it or not. but to me, that's fine, not in the context that that's money. every earmark you have to lend us the money or maybe somebody the road. it's got other stuff in it that you're not going to like in terms of policy that goes along with the spending. it's no wonder to me that americans say what is going on here. how are we going to change it? we're not going to change it until youit. two simple things -- term limits and a balanced budget amendment.

have it run like hopefuleds and mother -- households. madam president, i ask unanimous consent to exempt the joint scomplan torrey statement, the consolidated appropriations act of 2024 that was printed in yesterday's record. the presiding officer: is there objection? mrs. murray: madam president. the presiding officer: the senator from washington. mrs. murray: i object. the presiding ficer: objection is heard. the presiding officer: the question is on the nomination. the yeas and nays have been requested. is there a sufficient second?

there appears to be. the clerk will call the roll. vote: the clerk: ms. baldwin. mr. barrasso. mrs. blackburn. mr. blumenthal. mr. booker. mr. boozman. mr. braun. mrs. britt. mr. brown. mr. budd. ms. butler.

ms. cantwell. mrs. capito. the clerk: mr. cardin. mr. carper. mr. casey. mr. cassidy. ms. collins. mr. coons. mr. cornyn. ms. cortez masto.

mr. cotton. mr. cramer. mr. crapo. mr. daines. ms. duckworth. mr. durbin. ms. ernst. mr. fetterman. mrs. fischer. mrs. gillibrand. the clerk: mr. graham. mr. grassley. mr. hagerty. ms. hassan.

mr. hawley. mr. heinrich. mr. hickenlooper. ms. hirono. mr. hoeven. mrs. hyde-smith. mr. johnson. mr. kaine.f= mr. kelly. mr. kennedy. mr. king. ms. klobuchar. mr. lankford. mr. lee. mr. lujan. ms. lummis. mr. manchin. mr. markey. mr. marshall.

mr. mcconnell. mr. menendez. mr. merkley. mr. moran. mr. mullin. ms. murkowski. mr. murphy. mrs. murray. mr. ossoff. mr. padilla. mr. paul. mr. peters. mr. reed. mr. ricketts. mr. risch. mr. romney. ms. rosen. mr. rounds. mr. rubio. mr. sanders. mr. schatz. mr. schmitt. mr. hu mr. scott of florida. mr. scott of south carolina. mrs. shaheen.6ç ms. sinema. ms. smith. ms. stabenow. mr. sullivan.

mr. tester. mr. thune. mr. tillis. mr. tuberville. mr. van hollen. mr. vance. mr. warner. ms. warren. mr. welch. mr. whitehouse. mr. wicker. mr. wyden. mr. young.■e ■k

the clerk: senators voting in the affirmative -- baldwin, bennet, blumenthal, cantwell, carper, casey, cortez masto, durbin, gillibrand, hassan, heinrich, hickenlooper, kelly, king, klobuchar,, murray, ossoff, padilla, rosen, schatz, schumer, shaheen, smith

and wyden. senators voting in the negative -- barrasso, blackburn, braun, capito, cassidy, collins, cornyn, cotton, cramer, daines, ns hyde-smith, johnson, kennedy, lankford, lee, mcconnell, murkowski, rubio, scott of florida, sinema, thune, tillis, tuberville, and young. mr. sullivan, no. lankford

vote: the clerk: mr. crapo, no."4 the clerk: mr. marshall, no.

mr. schmitt, no. the clerk: mr. tester, aye.

the clerk: paul, no.

the clerk: mr. rounds, no.,p1■

the clerk: mr. romney, no. mr. grassley, no. mr. hoeven, no. ■ç

the clerk:duckworth, aye. mr. merkley, aye. u

■■7■$r

the clerk: mrs. fischer, no. the clerk: mr. peters, aye. ■q

the clerk: mr. lujan, aye. mr. reed, aye. vote:

the clerk: mr. ricketts, no. the clerk: mr. wicker, no.

mr. coons, aye.

the clerk: m hirono, aye. the clerk: mr. brown, aye.

mr. fetterman, aye.■

the clerk: mr. scott of south carolina, no.

the clerk: mr. hagerty, no. mr. budd, no. mr. booker, aye. mr. boozman, no.

the clerk: mr. risch, no. the clerk:r. welch, aye. mr. graham, no.■í

the clerk: mr. sanders, aye.

the clerk: ms. butler, aye. ms. e.

the clerk: mr. cardin, aye. mr..

mr. schumer, aye. mr. menendez, aye. . markey, aye.

vote: the clerk: mr. moran, no.

the clerk: mr. hawley, no. mr. mullin, no. ■

the clerk: mr. van hollen, aye.c

the clerk: ms. lummis, no. ■.■v

the clerk: mr. manchin, aye. ■wp

the clerk: mr. warnock, aye. ■,5

the clerk: mr. cruz, no. ■

the presiding officer:av senators voted? does any senator wish to change his or her vote? if not, the yeas are 50, the nays are 49, and the nomination is confirmed. under the previous order, the motion to reconsider is considered made and laid upon the table, and the president will be immediately notified of the senate's actions. the clerk will report the motion to invoke cloture. the clerk: cloture motion, we, the undersigned senators, in accordance with the provisions of rule 22 of the standing rules of the senate do hereby move to bring to a close debate on the nomination of executive calendar

number 456, cathy ann harris, of maryland, to be chairman of the merit systems protection board, signed by 17 senators. the presiding officer: by unanimous consent,he mandatory quorum call has been waived. the question is, is it the sense of the senate that debate on the nomination of cathy ann harris, of maryland, to be chairman of the merit systems protection board shall be brought to a close. the yeas and nays are mandatory under the rule, and the clerk will call the roll. the clerk: ms. baldwin. vote:

mr. barrasso. mr. bennet. mrs. blackburn. mr. blumenthal. mr. booker. mr. boozman. mr. braun. mrs. britt. mr. brown. mr. budd. ms. butler. ms. cantwell. mrs. capito. mr. cardin. mr. carper. mr. casey. mr. cassidy. ms. collins. mr. coons. mr. cornyn. mr. cotton. mr. cramer. mr. crapo. mr. cruz. mr. daines. ms. duckworth. mr. durbin. ms. ernst. mr. fetterman. mrs. fischer. mrs. gillibrand. mr. graham. mr. grassley. mr. hagerty. ms. hassan. mr. hawley. mr. heinrich. mr. hickenlooper. ms. hirono. mr. hoeven. mrs. hyde-smith. mr. johnson.

mr. kelly. mr. kennedy. mr. king. ms. klobuchar. mr. lankford. mr. lee. the clerk: mr. lujan.! ms. lummis. mr. manchin. mr. markey. mr. marshall. mr. mcconnell.

the clerk: mr. mcconnell, mr. menendez. mr. merkley. mr. moran. mr. mullin.ski. mr. murphy. mrs. murray. mr. ossoff. mr. padilla. mr. paul. mr. peters. mr. reed. mr. ricketts. mr. risch. mr. romney. ms. rosen. mr. rounds. mr. sanders. mr. schatz. mr. schmitt. mr. schumer. mr. scott of florida. mr. scott of south carolina. mrs. shaheen. ms. sinema. ms. smith. ms. stabenow. mr. sullivan. mr. tester. mr. thune. mr. tillis. mr. tuberville.

mr. van hollen. mr. vance. mr. warner. mr. warnock. ms. warren. mr. welch. mr. whitehouse. mr. wicker. mr. wyden. mr. young.

the clerk: senators voting in the affirmative -- baldwin, cardin, kaine, klobuchar, manchin, menendez, murphy, murray, peters, sanders, shaheen, sinema, smith, warnock, welch. senators voting in the negative -- braun, crapo, cruz, graham, grassley, hawley, moran, mullin,

risch, scott of south caroli, thune, tillis, young. mr. paul, no. mr. daines, no. mr. cramer, no. mr. brown, aye.

the clerk: ms. lummis, no.■,

the clerk: mr. cassidy, no.@eñx

the clerk: mr. m

the clerk: mr. heinrich, aye.■mf

the clerk: mr. kennedy, no. mr. kelly, aye.÷%■ mr. reed, aye. mr. hagerty, no.

the clerk: ms. hirono, aye.■

the clerk: mrs. fischer, no.u mr. durbin, aye. ms. duckworth, aye. mr.

the. vote: the clerk: mr. fetterman, aye.

mr. lujan, aye. mr. johnson, no. mr. wicker, no.

the clerk: mr. wyden, aye.

the clerk: mr. rasso, no. mrs. hyde-smith, no.

the clerk: mr. padilla, aye. ms. collins, no. mr. tuberville, no.■c

the clerk: mr. hickenlooper, aye. é/■é

the clerk: mr. romney, no.6

the clerk: mr. ricketts, no.

the clerk: ms. hassan, aye. mr. markey, aye.

the clerk: ms. butler, aye. ms. (

the clerk: mr. lee, no.

the clerk: mrs. capito, no.

vote: the clerk: mr. schmitt, no.

the clerk: mr. warner, aye.t/

the clerk: mr. scott of florida, no.

the clerk: mr. cotton, no. mr. budd, no. mr. lankford, no.x the clerk: mr. tester, aye.

the clerk: ms. ernst, no.

mrs. blackburn, no. ms. cantwell, aye. mr. whitehouse, aye.+

thclerk: mr. vance, no.■ mr. blumenthal, aye. ms. warren, aye.

the clerk: mr. the clerk: mr. bennet, aye. mr. sullivan, no.

mr. carper, aye.urkowski,

the clerk: mr. merkley, aye. the clerk: mrs. gillibrand, aye.

the clerk: mr. ossoff, aye. mr. cornyn, no.■b the clerk: mr. schatz, aye.■

the clerk: ms. rosen, aye.■ñíf

the clerk: mr. booker, aye.

vote:

the clerk: mr. king, aye.

the clerk: mr. hoeven, no. the clerk: mr. casey, aye.

the clerk: mr. rubio, no.

the clerk: mr. coons, aye.wy

the clerk: mr. mcconnell, no.

the clerk: mr. schumer, aye.■ç!

vote:

the clerk: ms. cortez masto, aye. mr. van hollen, aye.hx

the presiding officer: on this vote the yeas are 51, the nays are 48, and the motion is agreed to.■8clerk will report the nomination. the clerk: merit systeboard, ca harris of maryland to be chairman.

mr. durbin: madam president. the presiding officer: majority whip. mr. durbin: are we in quorum call? the presiding officer: no. mr. durbin: thank you, madam president. madam president, tomorrow night we will have the annual state of the union message from the president of the united states. each year members of congress are given a ticket to invite a guest to the state of the union. i've invited several people over the years, and i will never forget one of them almost was a

military uniform who came to see us from their hospital room. sh her helicopter over iraq, iran -- pardon me, iraq. and there she was a few weeks later as my guest at the state of the union. her name was tammy duckworth. now she's my colleaguement united states senate. so -- colleague in the united states senate. so you never know what might happen when a member of congress offers an invasion to the state of the union. e a special night and special friend. i'm hosting an extraordinary resident of my staple, dr. zahir salu, a critical care advocate at saint anthony's associate pr much more than that. dr. salul has a long history of leading timely and often dangerous medical missions to some of the most desperate parts of the world including recently

a trip to gaza. you see, dr. salul is president of medglobal, a nonprofit that provides critical medical services in areas of crisis all over the world. his work was recently featured on "60 minutes." before that, he led the syrian american medical society which led similar lifesavinghese effo other volunteer doctors provided urgent care to desperate populations, including in syria, ukraine, bangladesh. in fact, in 2017, when the burmese military was attacking that country'sa population with unspeakable cruelty, dr. sahloul helped the r- into bangladesh. i had a chance to visit him and witness those efforts firsthand at one such camp ne city of -- in the city of bangladesh.

i'll never forget walking through that sea of desperate humanity and see what dr. sahloul was doing to bring basic medical care to this traumatized population. it was heroic. what he andleagues similarly have done in syria with barrel bombs falling from the sky or in ukraine or in gaza has been equally moving. it's no wonder he's been one of the gan did i award for peace and unicef's chicago annual humanitarian award. i believe that dr. sahloul epitomizes humanity's goodness during times of conflict and trauma and it is my honor to have him as a guest tomorrow night. his work in gaza reminder of the dire humanitarian needs facing us in the unfolding crisis that started with the horrific october 7 hamas attack on israel. he shared with me and several of my colleagues deeply troubling

stories of innocent people caught in this conflict who are in desperate need of basic medical attention and supplies. operations and amputations occurring using vinegar as anant septic or tylenol for anesthesia in the amputation of children's limbs. expectant mothers without safe medical facilities to give birth. the united states started airdropping emergency supplies into gaza. it's a relatively small step but it is a step in the right solution to the conflict. i have long called for a cease-fire by all sides, that includes the release othe remaining israeli hostages. that seems to be the direction negotiators are aiming for before the start of ramadan. i hope that is the case. and i hope that any such pause can be used to reunite hostages with their families and deliver desperately needed humanitarian aid into gaza. i ctinue to believe in the two-state solution, one with new

leadership on all sides. i think it is the only viable long-term path forward. tomorrow's state of the union address, president biden will have the opportunity to highlight to america how his administration has been working with congressional democrats to improve the lives of the nation's wkingfamilies. in addition to the millions of americans who will tune in to hear the address, there is no doubt that people across the world will be watching and hoping that he will say th lead us toward a more peaceful globe. because as we all know, america's influence extends way beyond our borders and as dr. sahloul has proven so too are our citizens. i'm honored to be joined by a guest who embodies the best of america, selflessness, a commitment to service and a belief that a single individual has the ability to make the world a better place. i yield the floor.

a senator: madam president. the presiding officer: the senator from iowa. ms. ernst: madam president, are we in a quorum call? the presiding officer: we are not. ms. ernst: thank you, madam president. madam president, today i rise to tell a preventable horrific story. 22-year-old laken riley, a nursing student, was killed by an illegal immigrant. this bright young woman had her whole life ahead of her. she represented what our country need more of, a life dedicated to caring for others. like all iowans, my heart goes out to her family and her■■■ friends who continue to grieve this tragic loss. the reality is laken's not have to happen. in 2022, jose antonio ebarra

illegally crossed over the border into el paso and claimed asylum. instead of being detained while he was processed, he was released into our country never to be heard from again. that is, folks, until he was arrested in new york city for endangering a child. was he held to face trial for this crime in new york city? no. no. was he deported for this crime or even for coming here illegally? nope. new york officials released him so quickly that ice couldn't even try to lodge a detainer, even if they wanted to.

meanwhile, ibaa made his way to georgia where he disfigured and killed an innocent who was jog. madam pr this could have been avoided, but biden's failure to enforce the laws at our border allowed it to happen how many young americans must die? how many families must be ripped apart for this administration to wake up and take border security seriously? for more than eight years i have warned against the dangers of letting illegal immigrants who have already broken our laws, again those that have broken our laws, roam the country and

continue their lawlessness. i have repeatedly called on this body to step up and protect innocent americans from criminals who are here in our country illegally and pass my bill, sarah's law. eight years ago iowans michele and scott root woke up to every parents' worst nightmare. their daughter sarah, right here, beautiful sarah root, was killed by a drunk driver. sarah, a 21-year-old from counsel bluffs had just graduated from bellevue university in nebraska with a■ 4.0 gpa and a bachelor's degree in criminal investigations. she was headed home after

celebrating her important life milestone with family and friends. she had her entire life ahead of her. but while she was stopped at a traffic light, sarah was struck and killed by edwin mejia, an illegal immigrant. his blood alcohol level was three times over the legal limit. one would think her killer would clearly meet immigration and customs enforcement priorities. but, no, nope. citing the obama administration's november 2014 memo on immigration enforcement priorities, declined, declined to take custody of mejia despite his repeated

driving offenses and history of skipping court dates. before the root famil even lay their daughter to rest, mejia posted a $5,000 bond. 5,000 bucks. he was released and just like in the past,c8■ folks, he disappea never to be seen again. now here we lks. we're over eight years later. sarah's killer is still at large after that 5,000 bucks and able to carelessly harm others. to rub salt in the wound, the biden administration has removed mejia from ice's most

no big deal, right? no parent should have to endure the pain of losing a child like the root family did. know them personally. but unfortunately, the riley family is experiencing this same heartbreak. a loophole in our law means sarah's killer escaped justice. but today we can do something to ensure no other family has to go through the pain sarah's parents have felt every day for eight long years. named in sarah's ho would close the alarming loophole that let sarah's killer

go free. it would merely require -- it would just require ice to d detain, just to detain otherwise deportable illegal immigrants w seriously injuring another pe person. is thatoo much to ask to detain someone who has killed another requires ice to inform victims and family members of critical information pertaining to the investigation. right now family members are left in the dark. had sarah'saw of her death, law enforcement would have detained her killer instead of allowing

him to flee from justice. the root family would have been kept up to date on his status and federal immigration authorities' efforts to remove him from the country. simply put, this should be an easy one, folks. sarah and laken's deaths are both tragic and unfortunately are doomed to be repeated thanks to this administration's broken and ill inform ed illegally and harm our citizens shoul without question be priority for removal. it's just common sense, folks. otherwise deportable illegal immigrants who commit violent cri crimes, if they commit them here, they should face justice.

we can no longer prioritize illegal immigrants over public safety. we must pass sarah's law to send this message loud and clear for sarah's famil, for laken's family and for the countless american families that sarah's law would protect. madam president, as if in legislative session and notwithstanding rule 22, i ask unanimous consent that the judiciary committee be discharged from further consideration of s. 160 and the consideration. further, that the bill be considered read a third time and passed and the motion to reconsider be con■ñsidered made and laid upon the table. the presiding officer: is there objection? mr. durbin: reserving the right to object.

the presing officer: the majority whip. mr. durbin: madam president, as chairman of the senate judiciary committee, i'm reserving the right to object. but i want to make it clear we can all agree that noncitizens who are convicted of violent crimes should be detained and removed from the united states, period. under current law, under current law, any noncitizen who entered the country illegally, violated the terms of their status, or had their visa revoked can be ordered detained by ice officials. current law, current law also o individuals with serious criminal convictions and those who have committed murder, rape, or any crime of violence or theft offense with the term of imprisonment of at least one year. the law also gives ice the discretion to detain or release a noncitizen in cases where a noncitizen has merely been charged but not convicte considg

now from the senator from iowa would require ice do detain any individual charged with a crime that resulted in death or serious bodily injury of another person pending their criminal case, no matter what the circumstances or the nature of the crime exceptions. it's just one example, a victim of trafficking or domestic violence who defends themselves against an abuser would have to be detained under the law. most immigrants in the united states are law-abiding individuals who are seeking a better life. studies have shown that immigrants have no impact on crime rates and immigrants are than ordinary u.s. citizens. but the sweeping approach in this bill would deprive immigrants of the due process that everyone is afforded to prove they're innocent of a crime. i agree with many of my colleagues that we need a more orderly system to process recen

ensure that bad actors are detained if they have serious criminal convictions. recently, a bipartisan group of senators and the white house began negotiating a change in our immigration laws and a tough border deal. it by the republicans' designated negotiator, senator james lankford of oklahoma along with two other senators, independent from arizona, and the other a democrat from connecticut. the bill that they wrote to make our border safer and to deal with immigration was endorsed by the national border patrol council which represents the men and women on the border who are es every day to keep us safe. i had personal concerns about this bill, but i wanted to move it forward. and yet wn it came to a vote, the vast majority of senators on the other side of the aisle opposed it at the request of donald trump who tanked the

border agreement for his own cynical reasons. what were those reasons? one house republican said, and i quote, let me tell you, i'm not willing to do damn much right now to help a democrat, to help joe biden's approval rating. president trump himself wassaid if the bill fails. that bill was our vehicle and opportunity to work in a bipartisan basis to change many of the provisions in immigration law, to make america safer, and to maim our border -- to make our border security more efct some extremists have said the quiet part out loud. donald trump doesn't want a solution to our challenges at the border. he wants a political issue for november. it is time that republican colleagues and democratic colleagues stop talking about the border in one - responses to it and start legislating rather than vilifying all immigrants basedon a few bad actors. it's a tragedy what happened to

these two young women. there's no excuse for it and those responsible should be held accountable. i urge my colleagues to do the best that we can to come up with immigration reform that resolves not only this serious issue but all the other issues that we are hauntedwith on a regular -- haunted with on a regular basis. i object. the presiding officer: the objection is heard. ms. ernst: madam president. the presiding officer: the senator from iowa. ms. ernst: madam president, i am very sad that we're on the floor today and that sarah's law has been objected to. we have been down before bhaen times over -- before many times over through the year since sarah root's death. now, i has discretion, and that's what we're discussing today is the fact that ice had discretion and chose to allow edwin mejia to post bond of $5,000 to disappear into the night.

about sarah was even laid to rest, mejia was long gone and has yet to face justice f in july 2020 a mexican national was drunk driving in texas and struck and killed a chicago resident and two retired u.s. army officers. all were part of a pro-law enforcement motorcycle club. the mexican national was out on bond and awaiting trial for allegedly sin his truck in 2018, biting the victim's back and biting off a portion of his ear. if sarah's law had been on the books, he would have been detained in 2018 to await trial. in june 2011, a chicago resident was killed in a drunk driving accident. the driv,tional,

was driving with a blood alcohol level four times over the legal limit. he struck and killed a resident, dragged the victim's body 300 feet, and then attempted to run awayfoot. he was bailed out, again bailed out, not held, bailed out and fled to extradited back to the u.s. in 2022. if sarah's law had been on the books, he would have been detained and not been able to flee to mexico. in march 2021, a mexican national shot and killed his next-door neighbor in chicago. he then injured the three officers attempting to arrest■ him. the mexican national was arrested in 2011 for driving with an open container. in 2015 he was arrested again for aggravated assault.

in 12012 he -- in 23012 he attempted to lie himself into a visa reserved for victims of criminal activity and twice unsuccessfully applied for the daca program in 2014 and 2015. ifs law had been on the looks, he would have likely been detained after the aggravated assault in 2015. and again we would have another innocent that was killed still alive today. so these are just a handful of examples of where sarah's law would have made a difference. and i do understand that there is an objection to the discretionary part of this bill, and the example that was given, those who are being trafficked for sex-type operations... sex traveling is very real. but i also, because i have

worked in this space of domestic violence and violence against women, i do and have heard from those that have been sex-trafficked that sometimes the only way to break away from those that are trafficking them pulled away from those johns or those sex traffickers. so maybe to put them in an area of safety would be the right thing to do. so i appreciate having been hed. i will continue to work on behalf of the root family, on behalf of the reilly family -- riley family and others who have lost loved ones who should not be here in our country. with that, madam president, i yield.

the presiding officer: the senator from south carolina. mr. graham: 15 and just for the order of battle here, i'd like to recognize senator grassley, cornyn and hawley to make some brief some brief remad we'll make a unanimous consent request for some bills that we're trying to call up. with that, i turn it over to senator grassley. mr. grassley: first of all, i want to thank senator graham for his leadership on protecting our kids and also i'd like for givi opportunity to help him advance three bipartisan bills which could revolutionize child safety in the digital era. as child predators have exploited development of technology to harm and endanger our nation's most vulnerable, our laws to address this grave and growing threat to our kidses

fallen way, way behind. we have three bills to talk about. one goes by the title of stop, see sam, strengthens reporting requirements, success suspected abuse byhe cyber tip line, and it also protects child victims in court. another bill goes by the earn i 230 to ensure victims can secure justice, and then the last one, the shield act, would impose necessary criminal penalties for distributing illegal, explicit pr accountable.ld sexual i'm proud to cosponsor both the

stop csam and the ernest -- earnit act and have supported all three bills in the judiciary committee as part of my efforts protecerwith senator graham to these bills are essential to protect our children and are examples of the fine bipartisan work t is capable of doing when we put constituents first. nothing is more important than protecting our youth, their childhood, and their futures. it's time to send these bills to the house and then hopefully through the house to president biden. the longer we wait, the more children are victimized and more childhoods are lost. we owe it to them to do what is right. thanks again to senator graham for deferring to for your leade.

mr. graham: senator cornyn will be -- i see the chairman of the committee, senators durbin. anymore -- you -- -- anytime after senator cornyn, then we have senator hawley and myself. senator cornyn. mr. cornyn: last year the center for missing and exploited children received 32 million -- 32 million -- reports of suspected child sexual exploitation. as we are demonstrating here on a bipartisan basis you the senate judiciary committee, chaired by the senator from illinois, would pass six bipartisan aim to protect those children. and you've heard of some of them. two of the bills that have already passed the senate, including my protect safe childhood act. four others still need to pass, including the shield act, which the senator from iowa just mentioned, which i inth1duce minnesota to ensure that

criminals who share explicit photos of children online are held children are our nation's most valuable resource, and yet we neglect them far too often when they fall prey to predators online and in our streets. but we need to move on these bills. it's not enough for us to pat ourselves on the back and say the judiciary committee did its job on a bipartisan basis. we need these bills to be taken up and passed and sent to the u without further delay. i want to thank senator graham for his leadership on this issue, and i hope the senate can finally advance these bills. mr. graham: before senator rbin speaks, senator durbin has been terrific. the committee worked together to get these bills passed unanimously. thank you for your leadership. bringing us together on the floor today.

are you worried about what your kids are looking at on those phones that they're carrying around all the time? you're trying to get their attention and they just can't take their face away from the phone. you often many wonder what's on in? they say, don't worry, mom and everything is just fine. grandparents feel the same way. what in the world are they looking at? some of them are looking at horrible things they should never look at at that stage in our life. we also know the exploitation that's taking place. in january we joined together in a bipartisan basis, senator graham and myself, as chair and ranking member of the committee, to hold an historic hearing with five ceo's from big tech companies. that hearing demonstrated that kids' online safety has widespread bipartisan support. perhaps no other topic -- i can't think of another topic where we have had a unanimous vote on these bills by every member of the committee, democrat and republican, all 21. the emotion i witnessed during

that hearing and the faces of survivors and parentses and unforgettable. there were children that lost their children to the little telephone they were watching day in and out. they committed suicide at the instruction of some crazy person on the internet. they are still haunted by they some stranger on that little telephone years ago. you think to you are receive, why didn't they step up and say something if those images are coming up on the internet, why don't they do something about it? why don't they go to the social media site? in many instances they did and nothing happened. that's the reason why we need this legislation. the stop csam survivors to child online sexual exploitation to sue the tech companies that have knowingly the exploitation. one young woman told the story,

she shared an image of herself that haunted her for decades afterwards. she went to the website that was displaying this and told them, this is something i want to take down. itnt to me. it happened when i will's i was a little -- it happened when i was a little girl and still i am living with it today. they knew it was on the website and family proved it. yet they did nothing, nothing. they allowed it to be played over and over again. how do they get away with that? many people asked, i thought we had laws in this country protecting children. what's going on? well, there is a section 230, which basically absolves these companies, she is media companies, from displayed on th websites, their social media pages. that's what we change here. we say something basic and fundamental -- if the media, social media site knowingland

intentionally continued to display these images, they're subj to civil liability. they can be sued. want to change this scene in a hurry? turn the lawyers loose on expla no responsibility to that young woman? that's what my bill works on. i am happy to have cosponsorship with senator graham and others. we believe this package of bills should come to the floor today. that's what senator graham is asking for. let's have a debate. le the other side of the story, if there is one. for goodness sakes, for parents and grandparents across america and particularly for their kids, let's do something to protect them that is fundamental and basic, to say that this industry is somehow beyond liability and beyond the law is not it should country. i yield the floor. mr. graham: i say amen. and senator klobuchar. ms. klobuchar: thank you very much. chu, madam president. -- thank you, madam president.

i rise today to join senator durbin and graham, thank you for organizing this, senator cornyn, senator hawley and others whoo update and change our laws in this digital world. as my colleagues know, i have been trying to do this in the area of competition policy. we had a setback this week with losing the increased antitrust fees that were supposed to go to the justice department, but we carry on and hope that won't be the same next year and then join our colleagues the aisle to try to change the law. if we're not going to get the resources, we better change the laws. for too long social media companies have turned a blind eye when children joined their platforms and built algorithms thmful content out to kids.

despite hollow apologies and empty promises, these c the problem has gotten worse and every single parent knows it and every single person in this room -- you don't even have to have a kid or grandkid to know it -- you've heard it from your friends and we heard it in the testimony before our judiciary committee. that's why i support chair durbin's bill, the stop csam act. i am a cosponsor. the earn it act that senatoror have, and that's why i am working with senator cornyn to pass the shield act. i am going to focus on the shield act because that's my bill, but i support these other bills. in 23016 -- 2016, one in 25 americans reported being threatened with or being a victim of so-called revenge important. one in 12 people now report being a victim. yetness no current federal statute addressing these serious

privacy violations, violations which have enormous emotional, social, and even financial impact on victims. according to one survey, 93% of victims report suffering significant emotional distress due to having their intimate difficulty getting a their job or getting into school because these images are on the internet. and more than half have experienced suicidal thoughts as a result of the violation. fbi director wray, if you don't want to believe us, fbi director wrqay testified that the bureau has recently reported a massive increase in sextortion scams, with i in 2022 alone resulted in at least 20 victims committing suicide. 20 victims committing jordan de school senior and straight-a

student who took his life after he was blackmailed with the threat of distributing nude note photos over instagram. these kids think they've met a girlfriend or boyfriend. they give them a foe tote and it turns out to be a scam. these kids don't know who to turn to. they commit suicide. it is that straightforward. "the washington post" has done a review of a number of these cases. so are we just going to sit there and let this e get worse and worse and worse? i just don't think that's the answer. the stopping harmful image exploitation and limiting distribution or as its known, the shield act, gives law enforcement the tools they need to stand up for victims of serious privacy violations. est federal criminal liability for people who distribute or threaten to distributeothers' explicit images online without consent. it also fills in gaps in

existing federal law so that prosecutors can hold all those intentionally of these kids accountable. and let me make clear, we have of course, as a former prosecutor, as t president is, from the great state of nevada, we understand that y h these laws. that is what we've done, and we made many changes after the markup of this bill. we listened, we made changeso the bill. i worked to refine the bill to address the concerns and continue to work with my colleagues to do so. but at some point this was last y,nd we are still sitting here. so that's why i join my colleagues in asking to get these bills through now, not tomorrow, not a month from now. now. when that boeing plane lost a door midflight in january, nobody questioned the decision to ground the planes to see what was wrong. no one thought that it was the

something and checked out those bolts ahead of time or it was the kid who should have been able to figure out that something was going wrong here. we have laws on the books. as senator durbin said, we have the ability to sue. we have laws on the books. these companies are no longer little companies that started in a garage that should be shielded from all liability, that should have no rules apply to them. if we just want to leave the status quo and leave it to parents, see how it out for these kids, i'm not going to go that path. and that's why i'm joining my colleagues across the aisle to get these bills done and when they do their unanimous consent, to join in that as well. thank you. mr. graham: i want to say that senator klobuchar has been tenacious in trying to find common ground, bring people together, but also get a result. senator hawley will be next, and i'll wrap it up and make the request. mr. hawley: madam president. the presiding officer: the senator from missouri. mr. hawley: madam president, a

few weeks ago mark zuckerberg t executives traipsed in front of the senate judiciary committee, took their oaths and answered questions and mark zuckerberg did something remarkable. for the first time i think ever, zuckerberg stood up and turned to the parents who were there that day and spoke to every parentn america and said that he was sorry for what his company has done to the young people whose lives have been lost, to the families whose livesdestroyed, to the parents whose dreams have been dashed and shattered. he apologized. i'll say, madam president, apologies are good, and his apology was long, long overdue, but an apology is not enough. these tech companies, they're bad actors. we all know that. if you're a parent, i've got three kids at home. you know they are. what are they trying to do to your kids? trying to get them to spend as much time on that cell phone as possible. willing to push anything to

them. child exploitation? you bet. you bet. wh them online longer so they can take their dait and sell them stuff. that's their bottom line -- money, money, money. that's the mpanies. but what happens this body? i think the question today is not so much about these companies. we know what they're doing. we know whatne is. what about the united states senate? i think the question we have to ask is, is this senate, are they going to demonstrate some independence? re. it looks like to me the biggest corporations in the world, the biggest corporations in the history of the world have a it looks like to me no piece of legislation that those companies don't want will move across this floor. if they don't want it, it doesn't move on the floor. if they don't want it, it doesn't get a vote. if they don't want it, it doesn't happen. they call the shots. we've seen this before in american history. we've seen corporations try to buy this body. the railroads did it.

other companies tried it a ■. century ago. here we are, the robber barons of this era want to own the senate like they owned it in the past, and it is time/q tt we stood up and demonstrated that our oath is not to some corporation and their bottom line, which comes in exploiting our childre constitution of the united states and to serve our constituents, to serve the families, to serve the children, to serve the people who have no voice. that's the choice in front of us. it's time for the senate to show that the senate is not bought pained for. it's time for the senate to show that the people are in charge of this house, not the corporations. not mark zuckerberg, not the people who write campaign peopl. that's what we're doing here today on this floor. and i'm proud to join senator graham and senator durbin and come as many times as it takes until we can get a vote to protect our children and to

reclaim the independence of the united states senate. i yield the floor. mr. graham: thank you. to my colleagues, thank you for coming down. i really appreciate it. senator durbin, you've been a great partner in this journey. we have some victims groups. we're going to keep doing this until we get the result we thins the state of play. the largest companies in america, social media outlets, thatdreds of billions of dollars a year, you can't sue if they do damage to your family by using their product because of section 230. now if you wanted to give complete liability protection to a group of people, this would be the last group i would pick. so in 1990's, there was a law on the books to make sure the internet could get up and running, that the platforms couldn't be sued for the content that's on their platform. now these platforms enrich our

lives but they ds. these platforms are being used to bully children to death. they're being used to take sexual images and voluntarily, and voluntarily obtain and sending them to the entire world, and there's not a damned thing you can do about it. we had a lady come before the committee, a mother, saying that her on a social media site that had antibullying provisions. they complained three times about what was happening to her daughter. shf. they went to court, they got kicked out by section 230. the sexual exploitation of children is just mind-boggling. so we have legislation to strip away section 230 liability, absolute slieblt protections. -- liability protections. one is called the earn it act and i'll make a request for that all these bills have passed the judiciary committee made up of the hardest hard end body unanimously. we've seen and heard the same

thing. we have differeorld sho work, about the role of government in our lives. we come together on this. dick durbin and lindsey graham and josh hawley, you just name it, all of us, we see the problem the same. we hear from our constituents who are helpless and hopeless. so we're going to keep this up until we bring the people heal. there's three ways to protect the consumer. if the consumer is damaged, they can go to court and seek relief. they have the burden to prove their case, but they have a chance to right a wrong if they believe that's done to them by a business. you can't do that here. another way to protect the consumer is to have regulatory make sure businesses perform effectively and they don't abuse the consumer.

there is no such thing here. the third is a series of laws on the books to protect consumers. there's no laws on the books. we're 0 for 3. you can't sue them. there is no regulatory body and there is no laws on the book protecting the that needs to change. so with that, i want to call up, as if notwithstanding rule 22, ask unanimous consent that the senate proceed to the immediate consideration of calendar number 70, s. 1207, that the committeed-reported amendments be agreed to,he bill as considered be read a third time and passed, and motions to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table with no intervening action or debate on the earn it act. that is my request. the presiding officer: is there

objection? mr. wyden: reser the right to object, madam president. the presiding officer: the senator from oregon. mr. wyden: madam president, i've heard this discussion about parents, and m wife and i are older parents. the youngest child being a charming 11-year-old red ad say. so we are all in for protecting kid from these monsters. and there is no disputing that's what we're talking about. i senator graham, talk about a lot of issues over the years. no disagreement about these people being monsters. csam is a toxic playing on the internet perpetrated by people who, in my view, are evil to their core. these are real victims.

they need support. and criminals who have got to be hunted down and locked up. and i want to be clear, as i've said in the senate before, i don't take a back seat to anybody when it comes to helping kids and punishing predators. and in a mine i'll talk about my approach which i think is going to be effective. it might not sound effective, but it's going to be effective, aneen endorsed by the national district attorneys association, made up of district attorneys across the now, the specific reason i oppose earn it is it will weaken the single strongest technology that protects children and families online, something known as strong encryption. it's going to make it easier to punish sites that use encryption to secure private conversations and personal devices. this bill is designed to commun

technology companies to scan users' messages. i for one don't find that a particularly comforting idea. now, the sponsors of the bill have argued, and senator graham is right, we've been talking about this awhile -- that their bills don't harm encryption. and yet the bills allow courts to punish companies that offer encryption. in fact, while it includes some vague language about protecting encryption, it explicitly allows encryption to be used as evidence for various forms of liability. prosecutors are going to be quick t argue that employing encryption was evidence of a company's negligence preventing the distribution of csam, for example. the bill is designed to encourage scanning of content on users phones or computers which has the same consequences as en.

that's why 100 groups, civil society groups, including the american library association -- people that i think all of us have worked for, human rights campaign, the list goes, respect the fourth, restore the fourth, all of them oppose this bill essential security. weakening encryption is the single biggest gift you could give to these predators and these god-awful people who want to stalk and spy on kids. sexual predators are going to have a far easier time stealing photographs of kids, tracking their phones and spying on their private messages once encryption is breached. it is very ironic that a bill that's supposed to make kidsl safer would have the threat of, have the effect of threatening the privacy and security of all law-abiding americans. my alter to be clear about this, because i think senator graham has been

sincere about saying that this is a horrible problem involves kids. we have a disagreement on the that's what is at issue. and what i want us to do is to focus our energyn giving law enforcement officials the tools they need to find and prosecute these monstrous criminals and spreading abuse materials online. that can help prevent kids from becoming victims in the first place. so i have introduced to do this the invest in child safety act to direct $5 billion to do thre this very urgent problem. what i have proposed in the invest in child safety act, i'm very pleased to be able to sayd national district attorneys association. one, give law enforcement agencies the tools and personnel they need to catch the predators

who are creating and spreading csam. two, fund community-based programs to prevent at-risk kids from becoming victims in the first place. and, three, invt in programs to support survivors of abuse. any legislation that doesn't include these ay particularly tr graham because he and i have talked about this many times over the years, and just have a difference of opinion, but any legislation that doesn't include the three pieces i mentioned, i don't think is up to the task of protecting these kids that we prevent feel so strongly about. therefore, i object. the presiding officer: objection is heard. mr. graham: very quickly, and i there is nothing in this bill about encryption. we say this is not an encryptio ily prohibits courts from treating encryption as an independent basis from liability. we're agnostic about that.

what we're trying to do is hold these companies accountable by making sure they engage in best business practices. e simply says for you to have liability protections, you have to prove that you tried to protectit. it's not given to you. you have to have the best business practices in best, volunteer commissions that lay out what would be the best way to harden these sites against sexual exploitation. if you do those things, you get liability, it'syou forever. the bottom line is there is always a reason not to do anything that holds these people liable. that's the bottom line. they'll never agree to any bill that allows you to get them in court.

if you're waiting to get permission for theage person to sue -- the average person to sue you, it ain't never going to happen. csam, senator durbin, you have talking about making sure that sexually explicit material is taken down when you notify is that unreasonable? if they don't take it down, knowing that it's up there, you ought to be able to sue them. my god, if we can't do that, what good are we? there are millions of these photos out there. and senator, been terrific to empower consumers with some hope they don't have to live this over and over and over again. is it too much to ask the company once notified to take this stuff down? so with that, as if in legislative session and 22, i a

unanimous consent that the senate proceed to the immediate consideration of calendar number 69, s. 1199, that the committee-reported amendment agreed, the bill be considered read a third time and and passed that the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table with no intervening action or debate. the presiding officer: is there objection? mr. wyden: reserving the right to object. the presiding officer: the senator from oregon. mr. wyden: madam president, again i have made my point that i don't disagree in the least with senator graham on the seriousness of the problem. unfortunatelhi suffers from exactly the same matters that i objected to earlier.■ so i'm not going to repeat myself and put everybody through that. but here are the main points to on csam,

as i did with respect to earn it. csam is a horrifying playing on the internet. senator graham and i do not disagree on that point at all. weak he think encryption is not going to help kids or make them safer and that's what this bill does. the leadership conference for civil rights opposes this bill and the earlier bill because they threaten secure private communications essential for communities of color and every single family in the country. the presiding officer: my door is open in talking about --

mr. wyden: i believe in giving law enforcement the tools to lock these horrible criminals behind bars for exploit lg kids is something that we ought to get on with, and we ought to invest in programs that protect survivors. the invest in child safety act that i've written with the of the district attorneys association is endorsed by the national center for missing and exploited children and leading child welfare groups, and what this bill does. is it finally offers a measure of real protection for these kids that we've beent over the who deserve it. their families deserve it. and the legislation that i have proposed endorsed by influential voice like the district attorneys association the national censing and

exploited children with respect to csam are the way to go. and again, anything less, and i don't criticize ■2anybody's motives, just isn't up to the problem. for that reason, i object to this bill as well. the presiding officer: objection is heard. mr. graham: we have one more. i'll take you up on your offer. you're a good friend and good the bottom line is there's the

will be a day when every seat is filled up here. you've been terrific. i don't think you're a lawyer, are you? you're the smartest on the committee then. he figured t quickly. you don'tyou. have to be a lawyer to figure this out. common sense and human decedece the shield act, notwithstanding rule 22, i ask unanimous consent the senate proceed to the immediate consideration of calendar number 78, s. 412, the committee-reported substitute as amended, be considered read a third time and passed, the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table with no intervening action or debate. the presiding officer: is there an objection? mr. booker: madam president. the presiding officer: the senator from new jersey. mr. booker: reserving the right to object. i want to thank the presiden th

friend, senator lindsey graham, who has been a partner on so many good things criminal justice and safety, and been a partner on many things in foreign policy as well. i want to object to the senator from south carolina to pass the shieldct by unanimous consent but i want to start by saying that i know we are talking about we must address as united states -- as a united states senate. i believe the senator from south carolina and i have a common goal and we see eye to eye. any time a person's privacy or bodily autonomy is violated, we have a duty to address the harm that they have experienced and seek solutions so that we prevent the same thing from happening to others. he and i have talked about this in the committee multiple times. congress must act when there are people who exploit others or harass them or set out to ex act

some -- exact some twisted revenge on them by sharing n nonconsensual images, they should being held accountable for the serious, emotional, psychological and professional harm it can cause to victims. i believe this is what the sponsors of the shield act intend to do. but the bill offered today stands to have unintended consequences i scuffed in committee need to be addressed. many ofe addressed in our committee in the markup of the bill and are senator klobuchar, who leads this bill, has been working with me to correct those clem -- those problems. we are working diligently and if good faith to address these issues so congress can pass a bill to vindicate the victims. when we were in committee, i spoke and asked for the opportunity to do that work and i'm hoping that we can continue to have that now. it is our obligation to get this

right, and i am grateful to the senator from minnesota and her staff for working with me to make sure that we do so. and thus i object. as if in legislative session and notwit -- the presiding officer: senator, the objection is heard. mr. booker: thank you very much. i was doing what i was told. forgive me. graham if you -- mr. graham: if you -- mr. booker: any time you want to defer tos my highest honor. thank you very much. mr. graham: madam president, we will be back. we will work with senator booker. we tried in committee. senator wyden, we'll keep talking. but i think the 21 of us are pretty determined that there be some consumer protection lawsne this space on the books this year. i'm going to talk to president trump, it looks like he's going to be the republican nominee. i've known president biden a long time. he's been on the judiciary

committee. i hope both of them would see this as something they would agree to, and senator wrap-up. i cannot thank you enough. we have our differences for sure, but on this, you have just -- you've been a great leader of the committee. no matter what happens in 2025, if we take over, you all keep the chamber, we're going to keep doing this. mr. durbin: madam president, i want to thank senator graham. this has truly been a bipartisa together? why don't the two parties work together? 21 members of the senate judiciary committee unanimously voted for these six bills, unanimously. and we come to the floor today saying we want to bring these up to the floor for consideration. this chamber is largely empty day in and day out. we have plenty of time and opportunity to use these desks and these microphones to consider these issues. what are the issues that we

polite take up? the issues that keep families up at night? why in the world is our little girl on the telephone night and day? what is she doing on there? she promises she is safe and not to worry, mom and dad, but we goodness sake, what is a parent supposed to do? how consider the worst-case scenario, someone takes advantage of our ill -- of your little girl or granddaughter on the internet and display something horrifying, and you can't believe it and you go to the media platform and you say, for goodness sake's take the image down. this is exactly where will find it, take it down. we don't want it broadcast anymore. if the media platform at that i information you've given them to protect your family, then they can be held civilly liable. ca do you think they will pay

attention then? of course they will. and i thank senator graham f th. he's been a wonderful partner on these issues. woef been working on -- we've been working on a modification to make sure we consider everyone's point of view, we do not take the issue on agnostic that subject, we do believe something should be done to protect these families once and for all, and let the media platforms, these multimillioned platforms know they have a responsibility to the i ask that the following senators be permitted to speak, senator collins for up to five minneapolis and senator murray for up to ten mi6utes. the presiding officer: without objection.

the priding officer: the senator from maine. ms. collins: madam president, i urge my colleagues to support the sixth bill, fiscal year 2024 appropriations package cha is -- that is before us. i'm pleased to report that■w th house of representatives overwhelmingly passed this bill earlier today by a vote of 339-85. it was strongly bipartisan and now the senate should follow suit. i want to express my thanks to

the republican ranking members on each of the six subcommittees, senators murkowski, moran, hoeven, boozman, kennedy, and hyde-smith for their tremendous work in selling this package -- assembling this package. i also want to recognize the chair of the committee, senator patty murray, who has worked so hard since she was named chair and i vice chair in order to bring us to this point. i also want to salute the democratic chairs for their work. my point, madam president, is i including our incredibly hardworking staff, have worked night and day to this point. the measure before us includes

the following fiscal year>2024 appropriations bills, interior, commerce, justice, and sc fda, construction and veterans affairs. energy and water development. and transportation and housing. and again, madam president, although i wish this had happened months ago, these are full-year appropriations bills. in other words, this is not another continuing short-term rather a package of bills that will fund these important programs and agencies and departments through the end of the fiscal year. this package fully funds veterans medical care, supports our farmers, fishermen and

ranchers, protect our nation's food and drug supply, provides critical resources for law enforcement, helps us better compete with■) american energy independence, and invests in our nation's infrastructure and public lands. this legislation also complies with the fiscal responsibility act as well as the top-line spending agreement reached between speaker johnson and senator schumer. under funding for this fiscal year will increase by 3.3% relative to fiscal year 2023 enacted levels, while nondefense funding will be held flat. madam president, that is not easy to do, particularly given the impact of inflation, the

5.2% federal employee pay raise which many of these agencies are going to have to absorb. so it took a great deal of negotiation and hard work for us to get to this point. it certainly has not been easy, but i am proudf the legislation we are bringing to the floor today. i urge my colleagues to join me in voting this important legislative package forward toward enactment. i look forward to furtherloor discussion tomorrow, but right now i do urge a yes vote on the motion to proceed. thank you, madam president. mrs.adam president. the presiding officer: the senator from washington. mrs. murray: thank you, madam president. and i want to thank the vice chair who spent innumerable hours with me for a very long time through many, many different discussions and meetings and hearings and for her inyesterdayible work to get -- incredible work to get

here tonight to this vote. thank you so much. you know, madam president, this week we will at long last be voting on our bipartisan, bicameral full-year funding bills. in ct passed the house in a huge bipartisan vote today, over 300 members voting in favor. it has been a long negotiation, long road, tough negotiation to get here. we're not done yet. and i'll have more to say, but i come to the floor tonight to briefly talk a bit about what is actually in these bills and why this is so important to families across the country and to people in states like mine everywhere. my focus all the way through this process from day one has been how can we produce these strongest bills given some very tight■, const get a result that will make people's lives better. while this package may not be what i've written on my own, i'm sure my vice chair would say it would not be what she wrote on her own, but we fought very hard to protect investments that matter to working people

everywhere and help keep o economy strong, rejecting devastating cuts to housing, nutrition assistance, and a lot more. importantly, we blocked countless extreme republican policies like efforts to restrict abortion rights that would have set our country back decades. this package ilu our economy, le cutting edge research, renewable energy, key programs to continue rebuilding s infrastructure, and funding for my 21st century cures act to support america's world class biomedical research enterprise. democrats fought hard to protect investments in rural communities and support our farmers. it includes investments to keep america safe like funding for more air traffic controllers, rails, safety inspectors, food safety inspectors, and to implement the law passed along with senator collins starting up fda's cosmetics oversight.

it's a major achievement in this bill.anls reject unthinkable cuts proposed by house republicans to federal law enforcement, the people who go after drug traffickers and do so much e and communities safe. not to mention these bills protect pay for federal firefighters, boost our investments in preventing violence against women, and fund a new program to increase sexual assault exam access that i've worked on. this package also includes investments in our environment and allows democrats to continue to deliver on historic climate action, even as house republicans sought to gut agencies like epa and interior. we deliver in this bill investments to keep our commitments to tribes, including by continuing to provide advanced appropriations so the indian health service can serve patients with certainty and gher staff -- hire staff for hospitals. it also includes investments supporting our servicemembers

which is especially important to me as the daughter of a world war ii veteran. it has crucial resources for military construction projects, including child care centers, housing and other quality of life improvements for our troops and their families. it increases funding for the veterans caregivers program that i helped establish and expand, makes record investments to help end veteran homelessness, deliver mental health care for our veterans, and support women's veterans health■& care, all long-time priorities for me. and of course it includes support for american families. and that means protecting investments to address the housing crisis, something important to my home state of washington, programs that the house republicans wanted hollow out, but we together were able to protect and strengthen essential rental assistance, boost investments to reduce homelessness, and increase our nation's affordable housing supply. and it means full funding for

food assistance programs families rely on like■. ebt pr establish which will help half a million kids in washington state alone and wic. you know, madam president, someone whose family relied on food stamps after my dad was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, i know firsthand that action here can be the difference between families having food on the table for dinner or kids going to bed hungry. so when i saw that the house repuicould have forced states to deny families with benefits for the first time ever, that was never going to be an acceptable outcome. i said from the outset i would move mountains to fully fund wic, and that is exactly what i did. but let's be clear. wic should never have even been put into question. because ignoring the mountains of evidence that this program works, the longisan support for the fact that this program actually saves us money in the

long term, ignoring all of that, there's still just no ignoring the fact that the basic question with wic is can the richest country in the world afford to feed baesr is yes. it has to be. i can't believe i have to say that, but i will say it as many times as it takes, and i'm glad that we were abl together to reach a good outcome and fully fund wic in this bill. and here's the thing about our appropriation bills. they reflect the input and priorities of nearly every senator. as a voice for washington state, i'm proud of the ways that these bills invest in the communities that i know from every part of my state, with funding for researchers and salmon recovery, infrastructure projects, fixes to make sure that our harbors a fair share, and historic amount of funding for hannaford cleanup and more. i'll have a lot more to say about these efforts and other washington state projects i fought hard to include in these bills, but i'm so excited to see

this funding make progress, make a difference for folks back home. madam president, we said from day one that partisan poison pills were d that together. getting a result in divided government means putting aside that partisanship and working to finds how we managed to put together these six strong bipartisan, bicameral bills, and it is the only way we're going to wrap up the next six as well, which you should all know we are working very hard on right now. i think we all rfar-right houses have been trying to derail this entire process from the start, but as we saw today in the house, overwhelming 300-plus members voted to pass this bill. the vast majority on both sides want to get this done. by passing these bills, we can turn the page and show america that the vast majority of congress is still focused on doing its job, working through

tough negotiations so we can help people and solve problems. and again i want to thank my partner, senator collins, who's be just working with us, all of our staffs who have been working on this 24/7 for so long. they are exhausted and they still have six more■

is there a sufficient second? there appears to be. the clerk will call the roll. vote: the clerk: ms. baldwin. mr. barrasso. mr. bennet. mrs. blackburn. mr. blumenthal. mr. booker. mr. boozman. mr. braun. mrs. britt. mr. brown. mr. budd. ms. butler. ms. cantwell. mrs. capito. mr. cardin. mr. carper. mr. casey. mr. cassidy. ms. collins. mr. coons.

the clerk: mr. cornyn. ms. cortez masto. mr. cotton. mr. cramer. mr. crapo. mr. cruz. mr. daines. ms. duckworth. mr. durbin. ms. ernst. mr. fetterman. mrs. fischer. mrs. gillibrand. mr. graham. mr. hagerty.

ms. hassan. mr. hawley. mr. heinrich. mr. hickenlooper. mr. kaine. mr. kelly. mr. king. ms. klobuchar. mr. lankford. mr. lee. mr. lujan. mr. manchin.

mr. markey. mr. marshall. mr. mcconnell. mr. menendez. mr. mele mr. moran. mr. mullin. ms. murkowski. mr. murphy. mrs. murray. mr. ossoff. mr. padilla. mr. paul. mr. reed. mr. ricketts. mr. risch. mr. romney. ms. rosen. mr. rounds.

mr. rubio. mr. sanders. mr. schatz. mr. schumer. mr. schmitt. mr. scott of florida. mr. scott of south carolina. mrs. shaheen. ms. sinema. ms. smith. ms. stabenow. mr. sullivan. mr. tester. mr. thune. mr. tillis. mr. van hollen. mr. vance. mr. warner. mr. warnock. ms. warren. mr. welch. mr. whitehouse. mr. wicker. mrwy mr. young.■t

senators voting in the affirmative -- booker, butler, coons, cortez masto, duckworth, heinrich, hickenlooper, murray, ossoff, padilla, rosen, schumer, shaheen, van hollen, whitehouse, and wyden. senators voting in the negative --9+ cornyn, lankford, lummis, rounds, rubio, scott of south carolina, tuberville, and vance.

the clerk: mr. schatz, aye. mr. cramer, no. mr. cruz, no. hagerty, no. mr. grassley, no. mr. cotton, no.

mrs. hyde-smith, no. mr. cardin, aye. blumenthal, ay. mr. casey, aye.■#&5■q

the clerk: mr. lee, no. mr. tester, aye. mr. kaine, aye. mr. paul, no. mrs. capito, no. mr. johnson, .

mr. crapo, no. ms. murkowski, no. ms. hassan, aye.■b■

the clerk: ms. hirono, aye. the clerk: ms. smith, aye.

the clerk: mr. rictts, no.■)

e clerk: mr. budd, no. the clerk: mr. menendez, aye.

the clerk: mr. barrasso, no.

the clerk: mr. reed, aye. mr. risch, no. mr. young, no.t+ the clerk: mr. schmitt, no. the clerk: mr. wicker, no.

mr. welch, aye.[2■ vote: the clerk: ms. baldwin, aye. mr. mullin, no. cantwell, aye.

the clerk: mr. warnock, aye. s,í

the clerk: mr. thune, no. ms. e ms. stabenow, aye. mr. carper, aye.

the clerk: mr. graham, no. mr. marshall, no. mr. sanders, aye. mr. sullivan, no.

the clerk: mr. merkley, aye. mr. kelly, aye.

the clerk: mr. cassidy, no. the clerk: mr. lujan, aye.

mr. kennedy, no. the clerk: mr. murphy, aye. mr. markey, aye. mr. scott of ,

no.

the clerk: mr. durbin, aye. mr. daines, no. the erk:d

the clerk: mr. fetterman, aye.

mr. moran, no. ■g mrs. gillibrand, aye.

the clerk: ms. warr, aye. o the clerk: mr. manchin, aye. @4

the clerk: mr. brown, aye. ms. sinema, aye. mr. mcconnell, no. ms. sinema, aye.

the clerk: mr. bennet, aye.

the clerk: mr. romney, no. vote:

the clerk: mr. braun, no. the clerk: mrs. fischer, no. mr. hawley, no./]

the clerk: mr. hoeven, no.

mr. warner, aye. the clerk: mr. king, aye.

the clerk: mrs. blackburn, no.

the clerk: mr. peters, aye. the presiding officer: the yeas are 51, the nay are 48, and the nomination is confirmed.

mrs. murray: mr. president. the presiding officer: under the reconsider is considered made and laid upon the table, and the president will be immediately notified of the senate's action. mrs. murray: mr. president. the presiding officer: the senator from washington. mrs. murray: io proceed to legislative session. the presiding officer: the question is on the motion. all those in favor say aye. the ayes appear to have it. the ayes do have it. the motion is agreed to. mrs. murray: mr. president. the presiding officer: the senator from washington. mrs. murray: i ask the chair to lay before the senate a message from the house of representatives on h.r. 4366. the presiding officer: the chair lays before the senate the following message from the house of representatives. the clerk: resolved that the house agree to the amendment o 4366, entitled an act making appropriations for military construction, the department of veterans affairs and related agencies for the fiscal year ending september 30, 2024, and for other purposes, with an amendment. mr. schumer: mr. president. the presiding officer: the

majority leader. mr. schumer: i move the senate concur in the house amendment to the senate amendment. i ask for the yeas and nays on the motion to occur. no, i rescind that. the presiding officer: duly noted. mr. schumer: i send a cloture motion, mr. president, i send a cloture motion to the desk. the presiding officer: the clerk will report. the clerk: cloture motion, we, the undersigned senators, in accordance with the provisions of rule 22 of the standing rules of the senate do hereby move to motion to concur on the house

amendment to the senate amendment h.r. 4366, an act making appropriations for military construction, and so forth and for other purposes. signed by 17 senators as follows. mr. schumer: i ask the reading of the names be waived. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. schumer: move to concur in the house amendment with an amendment 1618 which is at the desk. the presiding officer: the clerk will report. the clerk: the senator fromewr, concur in the house amendment to the senate amendment with an amendment numbered 1618. mr. schumer: i ask that further reading be dispensed with. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. schumer: i ask for the -- i ask for the yeas and nays on the motion to concur with the amendment. the presiding officer: is there a sufficient second? there appears to be. the yeas and nays are ordered. mr. schumer: i have an amendment to the amendment 1618 which is terrific. the presiding officer: the clerk will report. the clerk: the senator from new york, mr. schumer, proposes an amendment numbered 1619 to

amendment numbered 1618. mr. schumer: i ask that further reading be dispensed with. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. schumer: i move to refer the house message to the committee on appropriations with instructions to report back forthwith with an amendment the presiding officer: the clerk will report. the clerk: the senator from new york mr. schumer moves to refer the bill h.r. 4366 to the committee on appropriations with instructions to report back forthwith an amendment numbered 1620. mr. schumer: i ask thawaived. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. schumer: i ask for the yeas and nays on my motion. the presiding officer: is there a sufficient second?desk. the yeas and nays are ordered. sch the clerk: the senator from new york americas mr. schumer, d 162, 1 -- 1621, to the motion to confer. mr. schumer: i ask that further reading be waived.

the presiding officer: without objection. mr. schumer: i ask for the yeas and nays on my amendment. the presiding officer: is there a sufficient second? there appears to be. the yeas and nays are ordered. mr. schumer: i have an amendment to amendment 1621 at the desk. the presiding officer: the clerk will report. the clerk: senator schumer proposes amendment numbered 1622 to amendment 1621. the presiding officer: i ask that reading of the amendment be waived. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. schumer: i yield the floor and -- i note the absence of a quorum and yield the floor. the presiding officer: quorum call: -- the presiding officer: without objection. quorum call: the clerk: ms. baldwin.

the presiding officer: the senator from rhode island. mr. whitehouse: mr. president, i

ask unanimous consent that any pending quorum call be vitiated. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. whitehouse: thank you, i am back today for the 29th time in my scheme series explaining to the american people to explain how the -- how the court donors favorable outcomes that benefited partisan republican or corporate interests and particularly today how the roberts court used false facts to produce decisions le shelby county and citizens united. this speech is the short form. for the full, for the long form, you can read my recently published law review article in the ohio state law journal. false factfinding is the trick

that has enabled the court to do a lot of damage in recent years. let's start with some basic principles of how factfinding is supposed to work in the american judicial system. facts are an important part of ery case, and it matters to get them right. and it also matters that courts stay within their constitutiona boundaries. to achieve those two purposes, the american system has facts ascertained at the trial court leve the trial court level. first, the trial judge is closest to the facts on the ground. that's where the evidence comes in. that's where each party can challenge each other's facts where facts receive robust adversarial scrutiny.

that's where the judge can evaluate credibility and time to compiling a robust factual record. in all of this, one key point is that the judge relies upon the parties to bring the facts to the court with only limited exceptions a court isn't supposed to venture off looking for its own facts. once the driel trooil court -- once the trial court makeson an record of the facts, that record travels with the case when the party appeals to a higher court. as to facts, an appellate court is not supposed to find its own. it is supposed to give the lower court a lot of deference. a lower court's factfinding can usually be overturned only if therwa clear error, a very hard standard to meet as any lawyer will tell

you. and even after a clear error finding, the ordinary rule is that the case is remanded back to the trial court for whatever further factfinding is required to comply with the appellate court's these rules make our system honest and efficient. they allow robust challenge to the facts at trial but deference to the judge's findings on appeal. they do not set appellate courts as fact finders. appellate courts focus on questions of law using records established by the trial court. these factfinding rules also protect our american separation of powers. under the limited to deciding o what the constitution calls

cases or controversies, and by obvious implication, that means actual cases or controversies with their actual facts. without 4÷ judges could make decisions based on hypothetical facts, in effect, offersary opinions. a court can't honor the constitution's case or controversy requi/1nt without cabining its decision to the actual facts of the case or controversy and to this established factfinding process. if that limitation did not exist, appellate judges could become, as one famous judge warned, a nighter -- night errant, roaming at will with his own idea of boughty or of

goodness. one other factfinding body needs mention and that is congress is the constitution's policy making body. that's our job. not because we are geniuses but because if our ideas of beauty or of goodness don't match the public's, the public can throw us out. that's democracy. the democratic process provides the public protection. and congress has its own factfinding authority under the constitution. we often find facts ourselves, creating a legislative record, not■ the trial record of a tria court, a legislative record of the proceedings leading to a bill. this factfinding authority merits deference from courts. again, not because we're smarter but because we are correctible through democratic process. which brings us to the mischief

at the roberts court. for more than a decade now the roberts' court has violated these basic prci replacing facts found by congress and facts found by lower courts with fake facts that they made up on their own. fake facts that over and over just happen to suit the big donors who put so many republican-appointed justices on the supreme court. shelby county and c united, both those decisions stood upon falsehoods presented as facts. and these weren't just drive-by errors in passing of no moment. these were false factual findings that were essential to prop up the logic of the court's

holdings. no false facts, no desired outcome. and tellingly, even after events thoroughly disproved the false facts, the republican supreme court refused to correct its mistakes. and so these faulty decisions founded on false facts live zom democracy. let me talk about those two cases because they're probably the worst examples. in shelby county, the supreme court said the most important of the voting rights act, the part that required those states -- to get clearance with new voting laws went into effect, was no longer justified. that part of the law was no longer justified because, quote,

things had changed. according to chief justice roberts, conditions in those states had improved so much that congress should no longer screen their laws for racist voter suppression. that false fact was key to the analysis overturning this part of theact. but there was no record support for that false fact. it just popped out of t h of the justices who wrote that decision. in actuality in shelby county, congress had compiled thousands of pages of evidence, a record of facts, collected through extensive hearing and research regarding the danger of minority

voter suppression in those so-called preclearance states. the court ignored that. worse still, preclearance state voting rights -- voting rights act protections immediately proved that the dangers that t n fact there. that these dangers were true. moving immediately to enact laws that targeted minority voters, with almost surgical precision, as one court put it. evidence before and after disproving the court's so-called finding in shelby county, that■ everything was oky now, the roberts court has refused to budge, leaving that zombie decision in place. the trick was even clearer in campaign finance law at issue

was supported again by a robust congressional factual record. congress had held hearings, gathered firsthand accounts, and wrote lengthy reports on the problems plaguing our campaign finance system. lower courts had also assembled similar records with evidence of these problems, many of which suggested corruption. all of that was ignored. the republican appointed justices in citizens united had a problem -- congress gets to legislate to protect the integrity of elections. we get to legislate to protect elections from either corruption or the appearance of corruption. so to get around that, to keep congress out of protecting the

integrity of our election t wit way of arguing that unlimited political spending in politics wouldn't÷9, and indeed couldn't harm election integrity. they had to manufacture that finding subvert congress' power. and to get there they had to make two factual findings -- rst, they argue there was no risk of corruption or even the appearance of corruption, because all of new spending they were going to unleash would be independent, independent from the campaigns the spending was supporting. wellhat has been proven abundantly false. even more obviously, they said that all this new political spending they unleashing would be transparent. not just independent, but also

transparen would know who was behind the big unlimited political spending and could make their decisionscordingly, danger of corruption was lifted by the fact that the voters would know whose mon behind the ads. well, folks, it is nondebatable that that fact is billionaires special -- corporate special interests have spent billions in dark money. this is so widy reported and incontestable that an honest court could probably even take judicial billions in nontransparent, and therefore changeuping, political -- therefore corrupting, spending. a lot of this money is supposedly independent, but in reality the groups that spend it

use all sorts of well-documented loopholes to coordinate with candidates and campaigns, right in broad daylight. the tsunami of dark money that citizens united unleashed has, as predicted, corrupted our demo democracy. the court didn't have to wait for the newspaper to know that the facts it found were false. a state campaign finance case came to the supreme court from montana. the montana supreme court upheld a 100-year-old state campaign finance law on the basis of an the history of campaign corruption specific to montana, and john mccain and i submitted supreme court in that case. our brief pointed out the factual falsity of the citizens

united decision, that the spending was not independent, that the spending was not those factual pred cats of -- predicates of citizens united failed and the decision should fall. not only did the republican appointed justices summarily reverse the montana supreme court, not even allowing oral argument, where perhahi false factfinding might have been pointed out, the corporate did so on the grounds that the montana decision was inconsistent with citizens united. no mention of the problem that citizens united was inconsistent with the truth talk about a zombie decision. since then, theourt has stubbornly refused to reexamine its false facts, despite several

billion instances of disproof of the transparency of the funding. worse, a couple of terms ago, these farted paving the way eve a constitutional right to spend dark money. the billionaire right wing donors who packed the court did very well by these two decisions, by shelby county and citizens united. the suppression of minority voters across the south post-shelby county likely flipped some elections to the republic the flood of dark money by billionaires and corporate interests was for years essentially entirely republican elections. if you want a specific example of corruption look at how fossil fuel industry dark money has, since citizens united,

stopped congress from serious b legis legislation. i was here 2007, 2008, 2009 when climate legislation was very current in the senate and very bipartisan. three or four major bills being worked on, strong bills that would have helped solve the climate problem. nfamy when citizens 2010, that united was decided. since then, that's it, no serious bipartisan climate bill. these cases happened because the court disregded rules about proper factfinding. ignored mountains of evidence that congress and that lower courts had and made up facts, just made up their own facts that helped them strike down the laws, delivering those

big wins for republican donor political interests. this free-raining factfinding problem at the court is going to get worse after the court's recent move in cases like dobbs and brewin to -- and bruin to base constitutional decisions under their new theory of history and tradition. this new theory opens whole new fields to judicial fact-fifindi night errantry, cherry-picking historical facts to get the outcomes that they want to reach. do dobbs, the case that overruled roe v. wade, stood dubious historical sources like a 1600's treatise by someone who sentenced accus defended marita, to subject women's reproductive autonomy to the whims ote

legislatures. bruin, the guns case, stood on an nra-funded version of history that one historian called an ideological fantasy, to put the proliferation of guns on our streets behind constitutional protection. when the supreme court goes on these last-minute no-argument made it up in■.zo chance of correction fact finding expeditions, there's no one to tell them, hey, youot■ç some stuff wrong. there's no one else that the parties can appeal to. the factualerors slipped in at the -- the factual errors slipped in at the end are protected from correction, and then the zombie cases march on. i wrote my law review article

because this factfinding trickery hasn't gotten the attention it deserves, either here in congress or by professors and judges. there is no shortage of mess to clean up at the supreme court, whether it's the court's ethics amici curiae who often show up to author those fal facts to the court, without any transparency or vetting themselves. my supreme court ethics recusal and transparency act would clean up a lot of the mess. but even if we pass that law and it helped clean up the ethics mess, and even if unpack the court that dark money built, these zombie decisions, standing on false facts, would remain effectual. unless, unless we have a legal theory to address

and my article proposes one way to scrub away these tainted decis decisions, by returning to the historic, basic, well-established, factfinding principles of the american system of justice. why should we in congress not confront the false facts of this stubbornly wrong court? and why should lower court judges be expected to blindly adopt false facts that never went through proper factfinding procedures? y shouldhat are, on their face, founded on false facts? remember marbury v. madison, that the supreme court famously gets to say what the law is. but it's not the last word on

what the facts are. nothing in the constitution says we in congress have to pretend alternative bizarro world of the supreme court's false facts. congress need not be an idiot and accept rulings that we plainly see could notqi■ without indisputably false facts propping them up. the fact that the supreme court won't go back and klein up its -- and clean up its false facts mess should not disable us from addressing the zombie decisions. if this requires circumscribing the court's authority, as far as i'm concerned, too bad. better that than to have citizens have to obey flawed decisions founded on false facts just liked who

the winners were. this should not even be an i issue. these factfinding rules stood for centuries it is only this politically driven court that has stepped outside the bounds of history and tradition. to go on these false, factfinding gal haven'ts that have -- gally haven'ts that have no proper role in fact finding and violate the boundaries of separations of powers. reining it back in in that circumstance is a proper. and if the court doesn't like this, i would say heal thy self process of factfinding, and quit finding obviously false facts,

and go back and clean up those false fact decisions. that's one option. they could do it. but of course, the federalist society justicesthis is a captu the false fact outcomes are the outcomes the billionaires who packed the court want. to be continued. i yield the floor.

the presiding officer: the senator from rhode island mr. whitehouse: i ask unanimous consent that the senate be in a period of morning business with senators permitted to speak therein for up to ten minutes each. the presiding officer: without whitehouse i ask unanimous consent that the senate proceed to the immediate consideration of h.r. 7454 which was received from the house and is at the desk. the presiding officer: the clerk will report. the clerk: h.r. 7454, an act to amend title 49 united states code, so forth and for other purp the clerk: is there objection to proceeding to -- the presiding officer: is there objection to proceeding to the measure? without objection, the senate will proceed. mr. whitehouse: i furtheread a third time and passioned and the motion to reconsider be made and laid upon the table, with no intervening action or debate. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. whitehouse: i ask unanimous consent the senate proceed to h.

con. res. 33. the clerk: concurrent resolution providing for a joint session of congress to receive a message from the president. the presiding officer: is there objectiona■ to proceeding to th measure? without objection, the senate will proceed. mr. whitehouse: i ask unanimous consent the concurrent resolution be agreed to a the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table with no intervening action or debate. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. whitehouse: i ask unanimous consent that the presiding officer of the senate be allowed to appoint a committee on the part of the senate to escort the president of the united states into the house chamber foressio 9:00 p.m. on thursday, march 7, 2024. the presiding officer: without objection, .. consideration of the following senate resolutions submitted earlier today, s. res. 577, 578, and 579. the presiding officer: is there objection to proceeding to theb?

without objection, the senate will proceed en bloc. mr. whitehouse: i ask unanimous consent that the resolutions be agreed to, the preambles be agreed to and the motions to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table en bloc. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. whitehouse: i ask unanimous consent the appointment at the desk be made separately as if made by the chair. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. whitehouse: i have eight requests for committees to meet during the is in aed. they have approval of the majority leader and minority leaders. the presiding officer: duly noted. mr. whitehouse: i ask unanimous consent that when the senate adjourn today it resume tomorrow morning at 10:00, the time for the two leaders be reserved for use later in the day and morning business be closed. following the conclusion of morning business the senate proceed to executive session to resume consideration of the noti nomination. further, that the cloture motion with respect to the noti nomination ripen at 11:45 a.m. further that if cloture isation and notwithstanding rule 22 the

senate resume legislative session to execute the order of february 20, 2024 with respect to 853 and the senate vote at 2:15 p.m. upon senate resume executive session, all time on the noti nomination be considered spied, if the nomination -- expired, if the nomination is confirmed, the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table. and the senate be notified of the -- the president be notified of the senate's action. the presiding officer: without objection, so ordered.s to come the senate i ask the senate stand adjourned under the previous order following the remarks of senator sanders. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. sanders: madam president. the presiding officer: the senator from vermont. mr. sanders: madam president, i think that as humg(an beings, w have a tendency to try to avoid thinking about horrifying

situations. who wants to think about or focus on things that are painful and terrible? but whether like it or not, there is today a horrifying catastrophe unfolding in gaza, where hundreds of thousands of children are facing starvation because of israel's indiscriminate bombardment and unacceptable restrictions on humanitarian aid getting across the border. and let me remind every american and everycongress, this is not some far-away natural disaster that we as americans have nothing to do with. this is not an earthquake in japan. it's a drought in sudan.

it's not flooding in china. the reality is that we as american taxpayers are complicit in this humanitarian disaster. and as americans, we must end it. first let me briefly recap where it. madam president, hamas started this terrible war with a brutal 1,200 innocent israelis and took 253 hostages,e whom remain in hamas' hands, including americans. and just the other day the u.n. reported that there is strong evidence that hamas also committed horrific sexual assaults against israeli women

of the worst kind imaginable. nobody will should forgive or forget those atrocities. as i have said many times, israel had the right to respond to that attack and go after hamas, but it did not and it does not have the right to go to war against the entire palestinian people. and that is what israel has done. for five months now israel has unleashed total war on gaza, relying on widespread bombardment, including the use of 2,000-pound bombs. the results have been catastrophic. in the last five d nearly 31,00

palestinians and injured more than 72,000. two-thirds of whom are women and children. two-thirds of whom are women and children. the united nations has had 165 af by israeli forces, more than in any other previous war. some 364 health workers, people who are there trying to take care of the sick and the wounded, and 132 journalists who are reporting on the situation have been killed as well. madam president, as this terrible photograph shows, the is has left gaza in ruins.

70% -- let me repeat. 70% of the housing units in gaza have been damaged or destroyed. unbelievably, 1.7 million people in gaza have been driven from their homes, taken out of their homes and sent away without really knowing where they're going to go or whether or not'l be able to return to this disaster. and that 1.7 million people is 80% of the population of gaza. infrastructure in gaza has been devastated, making life unbearable for the people who reside there. there is virtually no electricity and little running

water. there is not a single fully functional hospital for the 2.2 milliongazans despite the enormous medical need that the bombardment has caused. people are getting injured, no place to go. and, madam president, as horrible and as unspeakable as all of this destruction is, we are seeing something today that is even worse. for months the u.n. has warned that because of the israeli blockade of food and water starvation and disease were growing threats. they warned in december that a quarter of the population of gaza, over half a million

people, were one step away from famine. since then, madam president, the situation on the ground has only worsened. pele have been reduced to eating leaves and animal they are starving to death. they are starving to death. in children dying from malnutrition and dehydrationo emerge. at least 15 children have starved to death. unfortunately, these reports are likely to be the first of many. despite this nearly

unprecedented crisis, despite hundreds of thousands ofd children facing starvation, humanitarian access has actually deteriorated, deteriorated during the last month. the needs are significantly greater, but the aid coming in is less. in february an average of 97 trucks got in to gaza each day, down from about 150 in january, and well short of the 500 trucks per day before the war. the situation is now so desperate and■1 so that many of the trucks entering gaza are unable to reach their destination because they are set

upon by starving people who are ripping food boxes from the trucks. in other words, people are seeing the trucks coming. they're unable to get to the destinations that they are supposed to because starving people are fighting for . madam president, let us be crystal clear about why this is happening. it is happening because israel is not letting in enough humanitarian ■çaid. and it's actually that simple. they're not letting in the food, the water, the medical supplies, the fuel that desperate people need. israeli restrictions on aid mean that only tiny fraction of what is needed is getting in to

gaza today. and even when that aid gets in, we are seeing israeli military activities that result in very little of that aid reaching the most desperate areas. in the north, almost no aid has gotten through leading to the terrible incident of last week where desperate palestinians pulling sacks of flour off of a few trucks that got through were met with gunfire israeli troops. earlier in february, israeli forces fired on a u.n. convoy trying to reach the north despite it having been cleared by the israeli. and just yesterday the israeli military turned back a world

food programme convoy carrying 200 tons of food to starving people in north gaza. madam president, none of what i secret. anyone who wants to know does know. and let me share with you what some of our leading u.s. officials have about the war and the current situation. president biden has repeatedly called the, quote-unquote, indiscriminate and called israel's response in gaza over the top. he said, and i quote, there are a lot of innocent people who are starving, a lot ofent people in trouble and dying, and it has to stop, end quote.

president biden this week said, quote, got to be a cease-fire, end quote. we must get more aid in to gaza. # he also said, quote, we're going to insist, insist that israel facilitate more trucks and more routes to get more and more people the help they need. no excuses, because the truth is aid flowing to gaza is nowhere nearly enough now. it's nowhere nearly enough. innocent lives are on the line, andchildren's lives are on the line, end quote. presid indiscrinate. -- president joe biden. vice president harris said, we have seen roberts the families eating weeds, and women giving

birth to malnourished babies and children malnourished. the vice president also said, quote, the israeli government must do more to significantly increase the flow of aid. no excuses. they must openvw up border crossings, they must not impose any unnecessary restrictions on the delivery of aid. they must ensure humanar personnel sites and convoys are not targeted. end quote, vice president c harris, secretary blengen have blinken have repeatedly sighted -- cited these points to the israelis to -- to be more targeted and protect palestinian

life in gaza so children do not starve. you've got the president, the vice president, the secretary of state, you've got the national security advisor saying over and over again, israel must change its policies. and in the midst of all of that, how has netanyahu responded to those requests and those comments? here is the american government saying one thing. how has netanyahu responded? well, his response has not been complicated. he has ignored them. president of the united states said, what the vice president of the united states said, what many of us in congress are

saying, what the secretary of state is saying, national security security advisor is saying. he has ignored it all. madam president, all of this, despite netanyahu's refusal to adhere to any of the requests and concerns that our government has conveyed to him, the united states continues to pull out all the stops to support his devastating war against the palestinian people. year year we have provided $3.8 billion in military aid to israel. u.s. taxpayer money. more recently, the administration requested and the senate has approved against my vote, i should add, another

$14 billion in military aid this right-wing extremist israeli government. $10 billion of that money is completely military aid that will buy more of the bombs netanyahu is using to jus washington post" reported that the united states has delivered more tha 100 military sales to israel since the war began. that's right. despite the scale of the devastation, the u.s. taxpayers continue to fund this war. and today we learned that the administration has been breaking up these armed sales into israe triggering congressional

notification requem unacceptabls a brazen violation of the spirit and intent of the law. madam president, that is not the only way that the administration is refusing to adhere to the u.s. israel's interference in u.s. humanitarian operations is in clear violation of section 6201 of the foreign assistance act. and that law language could not be clearer. so i want everybody to hear what the law says. quote, no assistance shall be furnished to any country when it is made known to the president that the government of such country prohibitsr otherwise restricts directly or indirectly

the transports or delivery of united states humanitarian assistance. end quote. that's the law. the law is that if a country prevents humanitarian assistance coming to these starving children, it is violating the l is. and i think very few people doubt that israel is in violation of that law. yet, the administration and the congress do nothing. the state department doesn't even pretend to apply the leahy law to israel, reporting track israel arms and which units receive security assistance, a basic requirement of the law and a standardcountr madam president, as i go around vermont and around the country, it is my strong feeling that the

american people are increasingly disgusted by the destruction of gaza and the unbelievable misery that is befalling the palestinian people who are there. and the american people want it to end. they don't want to be part of seeing children go hungry. they don't want to be part of a literally destroyed. just the other day, and i hope my colleagues in congress hear this -- just the other day a poll'i showed that 52% of americans agree that the u.s. should halt weapons shipments to israel until shael stops -- until israel stops its attacks on gaza. 52%, and a lot of people were

unde undecided, and those who supported it was much, much less, a small minority. 62% of respondents w for -- voted for president biden agreed that the u.s. should stop shipments israel until israel discontinues its attacks on gaza. in other words, the american people in general and those who voted for president biden in particular want this war ended. they want the destruction stopped. understand a simple truth that we here in the nation's capalre, and that is t absurd and hypocritical to publicly profess horror at netanyahu's inhumane war while at the same time, as we say how terrible it is, how awful

netanyahu is, at the same time, we ship tens of thousands of bombs to his army. it is absurd to criticize netanyahu's war in one breath and provide him another $10 billion to continue that war in the next. or perhaps the most remarkable thing about this disaster is the fictio we tellñs ourselves here in congress and that is there is nothing, just nothing that we can do. isawful? my goodness, look at how all of those buildings have been destroyed, 70% of the housing units, it's terrible, children going hungry, terrible, children coming down with disease, terrible. terrible. nothing we can do. really? everybody knows what is happening. we see it every day in the news and we see the pictures, the emas ated -- eildren of the peo

while they sleep and yet congress pretends we are powerless to stop it. well, madam president, the fact is this is not a natural catastrophe. th+)is is a manmade catastrophe and if we had the political will, and if we had the courage to stand up to some very powerful special interests, yes, we could stop it. we could stop the destruction and we could make sure that these kids do not starve to death. but doing so will require that the united states government and members of congress have the courage to stand up to netanyahu and to use the incredible leverage that we have■ over israeli government to secure a fundamental change in their

disastrous policies. of course we have the leverage. we are funding the war, and if that's not leverage, i don't know what leverage is. the current reality is, madam president, frankly embarrassing. i supported the president' to a desperate civilians in north gaza. air drops will buy timeves. it is the right thing to do, and i'm glad that the president did it. but the truth is there's no substitute for sustained ground deliveries and many, many hundreds of trucks every single into gaza. and right now we have the incredible situation where a u.s. ally is using u.s. weapons and equipment to block the delivery of u.s. humanitarian

aid. we are funding them to stop us from doing what we want to do. and if that's not crazy, i don't know what is. madam president, it is far, far past time for us■@ to asking israel to do the right thing and to start telling israel what must happen if they want the support of u.s. taxpayers. israel must open the borders and allow the u.n. to deliver supplies in sufficient ■$ qu government should make it clear that failure to open up access immediately and feed starving people will result in the netanyahu government not getting another penny of u.s. taxpayer military aid.

madam president, the united states simply cannot allow hundreds of thousands of children to starve to death. whether netanyahu like it or not, the united states must do what is necessary to getpplies madam president, we all know that there will be a very long and torturous road to achieve lasting peace in the region and self-determination of both israelis and palestinians. the people of israel have the absolute right to live in peace and security without worrying about terrorist attacks. the palestinian people have the absolute right to self-determination to live in peace and to have a state of their own.

but, madam president, i hope very much that there will be new leadership that will emerge on both sides within israel and within the palestinian community to make that happen and to achieve a meaningful peace process. but one thing is very clear that is giving the unprecedented humanitarian disaster that is occurring in gaza right now, the united states must end complicity. with that, i yield the floor. the presiding officer: the senate stands adjourned until senate stands adjourned until t senate approved nomination lawmakers also agreed to begin debate on a six bill package of spding measures to keep parts of the federal government open

unl september 30. the house passed that bill earlier today. the senate back tomorrow for more legislative work centers will wal across the capitol to the househamber tomorrow evening to president biden state of the union address watch live here on cspan2. earlier today the senate consumer packaging and ways to reduce the plastic waste. watch the entire hearing tonight at 8:45 p.m. eastern on cspan2, c spent now are freed mobile app on thursday at president biden is set to give the annual state of the union address ahead of his speech we are asking what issue is most important to y to participate scan the qr code on your screen go to c-span.org/pole to add your voice to the conversation a look

here at the voting so far as is customary at the presently speaking for joint session of congress he is expected to outline some of the policy's priorities and share his thoughts on the state of the country. this will be the third estate of the union address of his presidency and likely his last speech in front of congress before the 2024 presidential election. will keep the pole opened leading up to the president's address. a reminder our live coverage of the state of the union begins thursday at 8:00 p.m. eastern with the preview followed by the president's speech the gop response by alabama senator kayleigh bri viewer reaction that will be on c-span, c-span out video app and online@c-span.org. >> minnesota democratic congressman dean phillips has ended his 2024 presidential campaign he posted the announcement earlier today

following his defeat to president biden a all of super tuesday's primary contest. he wte in part in 2011 i vp bidt notablwa his empathy and kine to my daughters and the catering staff where theyet had ice cream surprise surprises decency and wisdom were a rarity's in politics then an evenor so today. he goes on to say it is clear joe biden is our candidate and our opportunityo demonstrate what type of country america is and intends to be. integrity in the white house. and that is joe biden. >> a healthy democracy doesn't just look like this. it looks like this. americans conceived democracy at work cizens are truly informed a republic thrives. get informed straight from the source on cpan,